The best entrepreneur podcasts are some of the most popular new ways to share information and advice on any topic or industry. As female entrepreneurs, sharing community and tips from like-minded hustlers is priceless.
It can be challenging to get decent advice from well-meaning friends and family that don't quite “get it.”
That's why listening to strong, intelligent women throughout the day can help overcome entrepreneurial hurdles even better than some in-person feedback.
“The World's Largest Economies Are Not China, India, Brazil, And Russia. They Are The Nations Of Women Coming Economically Into Their Own.”
– Danielle Fong
Every stage of business development has its challenges. Learning from others that are one step ahead of you is one of the best ways to push forward. No matter what stage your business is in, I guarantee there is a valuable podcast episode at your disposal.
Brilliant and Best Entrepreneur Podcasts You Must Listen To in 2021
The resource-rich, unprecedented access you gain through podcasts will lead your business to new pinnacles. Let's look at some podcasts from the world’s most successful female business minds and CEOs.
Glambition Radio
The Glambition Radio with Ali Brown has a new podcast every week, and each time, it features top-tier guests. They all are iconic and passionate entrepreneurs who are catalysts of change through their compelling interviews.
Each podcast description has precise details of the speaker’s profile and what they present you through their valuable talk. The podcast is available on six various platforms: Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Play, iHeart Radio, and Pandora. Luckily, this many options allow you to choose your favorite mode for listening.
It has over 200 episodes that frame up a variety of solutions for your business problems. These are women that have been in your shoes and have hit the same hurdles. Though not all platforms featuring this podcast contain every episode, you can find them all at the link below.
If thinking about marketing keeps you awake throughout the night, then the podcast by Amy Porterfield is what you need. She helps female entrepreneurs by sharing expert knowledge through her interviews and bite-sized action plans. She even discusses her personal experiences about the work she put into the successful projects. It's never as easy as it looks to those on the outside looking in!
Amy Porterfield's endeavor is to formulate easy marketing plans for female business owners, as she knows well that our struggle is real. The podcast episodes include timestamps in the description, which is a great time-saver if you want to re-listen to a particular aspect of an episode. Though the release of the podcast is sometimes unpredictable, the good news is you have something new every week.
The intricate details Amy uses to organize and present her podcast are undoubtedly all aspects of her excellent marketing practices. They depict how meticulous her marketing strategies are. You would not want to miss that expertise, would you?
Emily and Kathleen host together and promote guest speakers who all share ideas about how to make a positive impact on creative businesses. They also love to share different ideas about personal development planning.
These business besties started hosting the podcast in 2015 to support female entrepreneurs in all possible aspects. The podcast covers comprehensive business topics to help listeners with many types of different hurdles. However, their core focus and target audience it truly the creative entrepreneur. Their friendly conversations about business advice and inspiring tips allow you to become the boss with a work-life balance.
To access the podcast, you can directly access the link through SoundCloud or otherwise use your iTunes app.
Host Natalie Eckdahl is a business strategist and high-power business coach with 25+ years of work experience. Her job is to devise an implementable strategy for achieving 6+ figure salaries by empowering women and supporting their business growth.
She offers over 400 episodes of deep knowledge and in-depth training that is priceless. The episodes help to pursue your goals by providing inspiration from industry influencers.
It focuses on the overall growth of women entrepreneurs to successfully grow their business.
Natalie Ellis & Dr. Danielle Canty are a combo of operational precisionist and marketing strategist plus the hostesses who run this podcast. The podcast focuses on the adversities female business entrepreneurs face in both work and personal life. However, they always offers appropriate solutions for each issue as well.
It includes self-motivation, relationship management, self-care, self-confidence, product launching, marketing, and many more such useful aspects concerning the business. Though many episode descriptions are vague, the podcast episodes are of high value. You can trust the subject in the title and jump right in.
No doubt, this show on our best entrepreneur podcast list will be your refuge whenever you feel down on personal and professional levels. This female entrepreneur podcast has every word spoken with positivity and motivation.
Tara McMullin focuses on the success of small business owners. She discusses how entrepreneurs they got tied up loose ends and managed to make it to the point they are at. She asks the in-depth questions we are always wondering about, and now can finally have answers to while listening to her podcast.
From personal growth to leadership, she leaves no leaf unturned, helping you devour this completely authentic knowledge while you listen on any of the six different platforms. Her experience of over a decade as a podcaster helps her probe the right questions without beating around the bush, making your every minute spent listening to it worthwhile.
Accessing podcasts from the website is a little tricky but if you are using any of the apps, then it is more efficient. Once you hear an episode, you will be intrigued to continue on with her information-rich, captivating podcasts.
Cathy Heller is a podcaster with a different mission as she guides you in following your passion along with building a happy and joyous life. She motivates and inspires you to construct your business into something which you cannot wait to wake up for. The guests are interviewed with prospectively deep questions with profound meaning and reflect her personality.
Her podcast has a different standpoint on business than many others in the entrepreneur niche. The deeply rooted values she presents make you rethink the way you view your business and probes a novel angle that gives you wings.
Even her description pointers seem like inspirational quotes and mini pathways for the big picture you are about to grasp.
If you are a girl and a boss, then this podcast is for you. It's simple as that, but beware it teaches you all about power which once experienced has no unlearning and sets you on rocket speed towards achievement. Girl bosses with attitude and courage to follow their dreams treat this podcast as their rule book.
Listening to this podcast, you can unleash the business networking skills and tools required to succeed as a millennial woman. If you enjoy learning in a relaxed way, then the humor and lightheartedness this podcast carries are all you need.
Refine and redefine your ambitions with the strong support of the Girlboss Podcast.
However, Sophia Amoruso has not uploaded any content since her last podcast in May. Her listeners are missing her already.
Rana Nawas’s podcast hosts worldwide lady bosses as inspirational speakers and has an international touch to it. This podcast has a reputation and huge fan following as it has support from various prominent media partners. As a partner of UN Women's gender equality initiative, they get to portray the most powerful women of indomitable spirits.
Needless to say, it fills the listener with an awe-inspiring feeling when they get to hear what path they treaded to be in the position they are now. This podcast assures the troubled businesswomen to understand struggles are part of the success, and successful women to reminisce their victory by finding solace in supporting the aspiring.
Giving heed to a podcast is analogous to having a friend who comprehends your concerns while catering to your enthusiasm. There are plenty of podcasts that contribute lots of practical advice, but not all are information-rich or vetted for their caliber.
The above list will facilitate you to find your business bestie that delivers what you deserve. Here you get everything such as prep talk, mental support, financial and marketing tips, managing your work-life balance, and more. Just tune in and find your support right at your fingertips.
Am I missing your favorite female entrepreneur podcast on this list? Do you have a new podcast to share with the community? Tell me in the comments below and I'd be happy to expand the list and help promote your endeavor!
*This article was inspired by 65 awesome entrepreneurs and written by Kelly Shogren and Robert Erich. It was originally posted on MoneyNomad.com and is shared with us via the Uncopyrighted Project.
When it comes to making money online, the first $100 is the hardest. Discovering what to sell, how to sell it, and who to sell it to isn’t easy.
However, once you make your first $100 online, two things happen:
You gain the confidence needed to keep going.
You discover a process that actually works.
Of course, just because you’ve made $100 online doesn’t mean that you’ll become a millionaire, but it’s a great first step!
I made my first $100 by writing articles on Fiverr and HubPages. And now, using some of the same processes that I learned on those sites, I’ve made as much as $100 per hour. The key is simply finding a process that works – and gaining the confidence necessary to make it happen.
If you’re ready to start making money online, but aren’t sure where to start, you’ve come to the right place! Below is a list of entrepreneurs sharing how they made their first $100 online – along with their advice for someone interested in making money that same way.
Some of the people mentioned here haven’t made much online, others have made millions. Regardless, they have all earned at least $100 through a specific online activity – and they’ve been thoughtful enough to share their advice with the rest of us!
So, if you’re serious about making money online, consider one of the strategies shared here:
I made my first $100 online by referring friends and family to a different rewards program. Every time someone I knew signed up I got a kickback of $5-$10 or got a percentage of their rewards.
What advice would you recommend to someone wanting to make money online?
The best thing you can do to increase your earnings is to start making a list of people that like signing up for the programs you find. Then, whenever you find a new one, invite all of them to join.
I made my first $100 online in 1999 by running ads on a website I had developed while in college. My work-study job at St. Edward’s University was building sites for some of the professors, and after graduating, I was able to take those skills and build another site. Almost exactly 20 years after starting that job in the fall of 1996, I am running my own, much larger, site and have held leadership roles at companies like JCPenney, Guitar Center, Fossil and Proflowers.
What advice would you recommend to someone wanting to make money online?
The best advice that I would give someone is to find a niche area that you’re passionate about and start building a website using wordpress or another tool. Develop content that you believe in, leverage Google adsense and Amazon ads and then do your best to have that content seen through SEO, blog directories and social media.
Created a self-defense website. Instructors could be listed and have their own landing page. We would get $25 for each person that signed up through the website for their class. Worked great.
What advice would you recommend to someone wanting to make money online?
Watch google trends. We hit a local Michigan market when legislation was moving toward banning certain self defense items. Which drove sales and a greater demand in that market. We saw it coming with trends.
Awais Imran — Writing Tech Gadget Reviews for a Blog
After spending two years passionately writing about gadgets and tech my own free blog, I was picked up by a bigger technology blog who was actually willing to pay me to do that! It was a dream come true to see my first cheque come in the mail.
What advice would you recommend to someone wanting to make money online?
If you want to truly excel at making money online for a long time, you have it to really enjoy your work. Online work tends to pays in peanuts for months, and sometimes even years. It sounds cliched, but I’ve seen it be proved true a dozen times in the last five years of writing online for fun and profit.
Shannon Palme — Building a MySpace Page for a Band
Shannon Palme Web Design
How did you make your first $100 online?
I made my first $100 building a MySpace page for a band about 8 years ago. I found the job through oDesk (now Upwork) and built a simple page for them for about $120. They were thrilled and it gave me the confidence to pursue freelance web design, which is how I now make my living.
I’ve made my first $100 online thanks to Google ads. I had been blogging for a few months before I realized no one was reading my stuff. I made a big effort to get out there, reaching out to other bloggers, being more active on social media, and so on. That is what boosted my pageviews enough to get a first G ad payment. If you want to make money blogging, you need to spend as much time or more promoting your stuff as you are writing content.
Making money online: Before I started my business, I made my first $100 online by selling video games on eBay. I think making money online is all about will and determination. If you are enthusiastic about making money on the web, the only limit is your imagination. There are literally endless amounts of businesses and products you can sell.
What advice would you recommend to someone wanting to make money online?
My best advice would be to research about any online business you are interested in starting and try to find out what the demand is. The higher the demand, the more potential to make money. You can do research by looking at Google Trends and seeing how many people search monthly for any type of business or products you’re interested in.
Mark Aselstine — 1st Member Sign-up for Self-Started Wine Club
My online business started a bit differently than most, instead of being an affiliate or anything along those lines, I started an online wine club. When we were waiting for our permitting to come through, we set up an email list for our friends, family and anyone that would have randomly showed up on our website. When we launched we let everyone know about it via email and the first sale came through for our most expensive wine club, on a quarterly basis. The sale was for about $225 and gave us, handily about a $100 profit. It was pretty thrilling!
Jess Waldeck — Commission from MavenX Fall Fashion Board
I used MavenX.com. I created a product board of my favorite fall clothing ensemble. Shared it with my friends on Facebook and earned a great commission when they bought my recommendation from the retailer.
What advice would you recommend to someone wanting to make money online?
Give it a try! It is very easy to add products from their retail network. And you get paid a commission when someone buys it!
I created a pre-sale online, directly from my website. At the end of the pre-sale, I had 10,000 newsletter registrants, 8,000 unique visitors/month, viral PR and raised USD 50,000 which paid for inventory. It’s all about the marketing and promotion, whether you host a pre-sale/crowdfunding on Kickstarter or your own website, if you don’t have your own crowd, it will fail.
Ben Slavin — Sold “Insider’s Knowledge” DVD to Motorcycle Market
After my 6 month motorcycle ride from the USA to Argentina, other riders asked for advice. So I put together a DVD with everything I wish I knew before I set off and put it up for sale. It’s an easy sell because it provides a gold mine of value.
What advice would you recommend to someone wanting to make money online?
Provide value, don’t be sleazy. Support your community and your community will support you.
I made my first $100 via Google Adsense. I actually still have the check they sent us (we later did an online bank transfer, so we could keep the check). Since that time, we’ve generated millions of dollars in revenue primarily through affiliate partnerships.
What advice would you recommend to someone wanting to make money online?
My best advice for people wanting to make money online is to think about the people that you want to pay you. If you want to generate revenue from advertisers, build a site that you are confident will generate more revenue for your advertisers than you expect them to pay you. Even if you build a site with a lot of traffic, if advertisers can’t make money from your traffic, they won’t be customers for very long.
I made my first $100 online by giving value to others through the lessons I had learned doing internet marketing and SEO, and putting it in a public forum. I made that first $100 after losing $2000 getting my personal blog professionally designed.
What advice would you recommend to someone wanting to make money online?
If I was doing it again or recommending it to others, it’d be the exact same thing: invest in a relatively inexpensive but professional blog design, work really hard at your craft, and then share those lessons with others in your industry. It’s the best path towards learning and then getting first consulting clients, which you can then have lead to other endeavors down the line.
Brent Hale — Amazon Affiliate Based Website
Hale Enterprises, LLC
How did you make your first $100 online?
I made my first $100 online with my Amazon-affiliate-based website (and that’s still the primary way I generate an online income.)
What advice would you recommend to someone wanting to make money online?
The best advice I could give any new affiliate marketers (especially those using the Amazon Associates program) is to really spend time on picking a profitable niche. For me and my Amazon niche sites, I look for topics that have a wide range of relatively expensive products in them ($200-$5,000). That way I don’t need as much traffic to build a viable monthly income.
Abhishek Lal — Selling Fiction Book on Amazon’s Self-Publishing Platform
I published a couple fiction books on Amazon’s Self-publishing platform and did some basic marketing to push some sales. While it took me some trial & error to find profitable ways of marketing my book, I was able to make around $100 in profits at the end of the first 8 weeks.
What advice would you recommend to someone wanting to make money online?
Find the right sources for the right advice as early as possible. There are some really high quality Facebook groups/forums consisting of self-publishing authors and you should join the groups/forums sooner than later so you can get inputs on everything from cheap ways of getting your book edited to getting high quality book covers made.
Marc & Julie Bennett — Thank You Check for Promoting a Broker
Our first $100 earned online came as a result of a blog post we wrote and published in January 2015. I had written it to demystify some of the quirks of a particularly confusing campground membership program, in the hope it would help others. In the article, I mentioned the name of the broker who helped us buy our membership at a heavily discounted price. Unbeknownst to me, some people who had read my blog post called the broker to buy a membership from him too. He sent me a check for $100 as a thank you!
What advice would you recommend to someone wanting to make money online?
Don’t create your blog with the sole purpose of making money. Create and write as a channel for helping others and providing value. People will learn from you, trust you and want to thank you by giving your name as a referral. It’s a much more intrinsically rewarding way to make money online – people appreciate you more and you will sleep better at night knowing you’ve helped someone, rather than staying awake trying to think up ways to try and make money off people! Strive to be of value… And people will value (and reward) you.
Graciela Tiscareno-Sato — DVD’s For Parents Raising Children With Physical/Sensory Disabilities
Almost a decade ago, we sold our first product online, a DVD created for parents and teachers serving children, who like our daughter, have physical / sensory disabilities. We created this first product in an attempt to raise expectations both in the minds of parents AND teachers about their children, so that the children could then be raised to meet those expectations. Happily, we have grown our online business and shipped our products to just about every one of the United States of America and over 10 countries.
What advice would you recommend to someone wanting to make money online?
Before you spend the time, money, creative energy to create a product to sell online, create the marketing plan with VERY SPECIFIC target buyers listed and HOW you will reach out to them. Why people create products first and marketing plans second I do not know.
How I Made $100 and More Online: I made my first $100 through Fiverr and a now-defunct website called Squidoo. I’d make Squidoo web pages for people looking for backlinks. That’s how I got started with professional content writing.
What advice would you recommend to someone wanting to make money online?
If you want to take advantage of the gig economy, don’t ever regard it as a get rich quick scheme. You’re not even going to make as much as the ones in the top tier of your niche at first. Focus on building your reputation by doing it as a side job at first. Save your best work as a portfolio of work samples that you can show potential clients who ask for it. That way, you’ll be ready to do it full time if and when you decide to do so.
Rob Boirun — Selling DVD’s about Video Editing & Running Banner Ads on Website
I made my first $100 online (not eBay or selling my junk) by starting a website around a tech hobby I had at the time in 2004. This was creating DVDs out of videos that I shot myself. At first it was just a diary of sorts so I can put what I was learning about video editing online so that others could benefit from it as well. I was contacted by a video editing software company that said we’ll give you (funny enough) $100 if you put this banner on that page. That is what ignited a spark and eventually that site turned into my full time income for 10 years.
I made my first hundred dollars online reviewing websites at Usertesting.com. Since then I also made money scoring student interviews, writing articles and selling my children’s book series and mentoring program online.
I made my first $100 by placing free ads online every week.
What advice would you recommend to someone wanting to make money online?
The best advice I can give someone else interested in making money this way, is to be creative with the title of your ad and most importantly, make sure the ad is listed where your target customer can read it.
Tweety Elitou — Writing Product Descriptions for a Jewelry Boutique
I made my first $100 online writing product descriptions for a start-up jewelry boutique that I discovered on Linkedin. It was very tedious work and I had to be creative, but since my passion is to write in the world of fashion, I accepted the job, did my best work and got paid. I learned a lot from the opportunity and I don’t regret it. It lead me to do more work for start up businesses that have paid me more than $1,000 in a matter of a day.
I made my first $100 online back in the late 90s by sending traffic to affiliate offers via some precursors to Google Adwords such as GoTo.com (remember them?)
What advice would you recommend to someone wanting to make money online?
While, it’s a bit more difficult today, due to increased competition, the same basic principles apply. 1) Find or create a product that generates decent margins. 2) Start sending traffic to that product. 3) Adjust your traffic costs until you have a positive ROI. Takes a bit of trial and error at first, but one winner will more than make up for the losses from the losers.
Kate Chan — Flipping Limited Edition Lululemon pants on eBay
I made my first $100 by flipping limited edition Lululemon pants on eBay. One thing that I wish I did was to spend a little more time crafting product descriptions and taking quality product photos. Doing those two can dramatically increase your sales because having great photos and product descriptions really makes you stand out from your competitors on eBay.
I made my first $100 bucks online not for my performance speaking but for my passionate knowledge as a travel consultant that comprises 17 years of working for a major airlines and conscience global travels of 32 countries, 5 continents and countless destinations. It was a travel consultation done via online. I was hooked!
What advice would you recommend to someone wanting to make money online?
Your only real job in this life is to figure out WHY YOU were put here. Once you figure that out, you teach it to the rest of the world… via online of course (-:
Patti Reddi — Sponsored Post About a Travel Destination
I made my first $100 by writing a sponsored post about a travel destination by creating a profile on a website that links publishers with brands.
What advice would you recommend to someone wanting to make money online?
My advice is to find and sign up for as many websites as possible that connect bloggers with brands because you never know when you will receive an email about a paid campaign to promote a brand in your niche.
Veronica Winters — Selling Art Tutorials & Etsy Store
I’ve made $100 on line in two ways. First, I set up my website to sell my digital downloads of books and tutorials, giving art students more choices to study without having an actual book. Second, I opened an Etsy shop to sell my ocean-themed handmade jewelry online. Both sites take lots of effort to promote. I use social media and publicity. Most important thing to understand is that I’m simply helping people without trying to sell, by listening to their requests and answering their questions without any expectations and building a relationship this way.
Caemin O’Connor — First Sale on Jewelry Website
Karus Chains
How did you make your first $100 online?
Via SEO & moving up the pages on Google. By going the SEO route, a businesses fate is in the hands of Google and after 18 months of blogging, reaching out etc, I was getting very weary. I was starting to lose hope. My strategy is long term, but it was taking a lot longer than I’d expected. It was just at that time that I finally got my first sale and made $120 profit.
Dave Hermansen — eCommerce Website That Sold Electric Scooters
I made my first $100 with my first eCommerce website that sold electric scooters. I went onto making considerably more than that with future websites.
What advice would you recommend to someone wanting to make money online?
My best advice would be to get some solid training, from a reputable eCommerce training course. It all starts with choosing something that gets enough searches but is not terribly competitive. Get that wrong, and nothing you do will amount to anything. There is a great deal of research that goes into choosing successful product niches as well as a considerable amount of knowledge that is needed in order to build and market a website correctly. Nothing is terribly difficult, but it does require a solid plan, attention to detail and dedication in order to succeed.
I made my first $100 online through a small, local affiliate website. The rush of getting that first commission and then getting that first check in the mail were out of this world! It seems so out of reach until you actually get that your hands on that first check.
What advice would you recommend to someone wanting to make money online?
If someone is interested in making money online, I would recommend they pick one niche and stick with it. This has always been difficult for me, because I have many different interests. Unfortunately this doesn’t work well when you are trying to SEO 50 sites all at once. So pick one niche, and stick with it until it’s generating money for you.
I am a visual artist so virtually all of my online earnings have been through sales of artwork. I first started earning money through the Painting a Day craze. I would create a new small Shiva Paintstik work each day and offer it on auction on Ebay. I sold works from $50 to about $200 depending on how popular the work was. Now I am painting sporting events live and using twitter to drive buyers to my website to purchase works from $50 all the way up to thousands.
What advice would you recommend to someone wanting to make money online?
For others, find that thing you are passionate about, and then try to find your market. It takes some consistent effort to break through the noise on social media, but it can be done. It helps if what you are offering for sale is original, interesting and of a very high quality, but pushing yourself on social media can often overcome work that is not as strong in any of those three categories. Remember, online, there is an audience for *everything* as the porn industry has taught us.
When I started my writing business, I did most of my prospecting online, primarily through LinkedIn. Word spread quickly. I do lots of business all around North America and in Europe. Great income and I do it all from the comfort of my home office. I mostly write website content and blogs as a ghostwriter.
Zondra Wilson — Selling Skin Care Products in eCommerce Store
I made my first $100 online by selling products through my ecommerce store. I sell usda certified organic skin care products. I sold a cleanser, toner, moisturizer and honey face mask for that first $100 plus sell.
What advice would you recommend to someone wanting to make money online?
The best advice that I can give someone interested in making money online is to set up an ecommerce store. Make sure your website is professional and you will be on your way to making some great pocket cash or more.
Google Adsense made me my first $100 online, but it took years to hit the $100 mark. So the best advice I’d give someone is not to do it. I still have ads on website pages that are popular, but not targeted at my ideal reader. The ads make pennies, but no point in leaving them on the table!
What advice would you recommend to someone wanting to make money online?
The way I made my first worth-your-time $100 online was with Amazon’s affiliate marketing program. My best advice: write reviews of products you are really passionate about and believe in. That passion will lead to quality content that will draw readers, many of whom will become buyers as well!
Ray Higdon — Affiliate Program For A Digital Training Company
I made my first $100 online by being an affiliate for a digital training company. I got my link, I at first spammed it to a bunch of people with no one buying and then learned how to do Google adwords and made a few sales. Since then we have generated over $1 million in affiliate commissions and over $10 million in overall online sales.
What advice would you recommend to someone wanting to make money online?
My advice would really depend on what niche someone was in but it would probably involve some form of information marketing. If I was a realtor I would use the Internet to get my listings out but would also create some digital training or eBook that I could sell to other realtors showing them what I was doing.
What I did was just create a simple yet nice website, SEOed it up, got a cool graphic, with a great unique story, and BABOOM!…made my first $100 and yes, now a millionaire…
What advice would you recommend to someone wanting to make money online?
The key for anyone to make that first $100 is simple..you MUST have a product or service that is so unique and different, then SEO it up big time, and finally, do some PR because you ARE so unique and different!!…..it all starts with creating something that will allow you to own your niche..that’s the key, mate!
When I first started freelance writing, I wasn’t sure how to find customers and I knew nothing about SEO, except that it took time to build your page rank. I put together a basic website using WordPress and used Google Adwords to find my first leads!
What advice would you recommend to someone wanting to make money online?
Start blogging about topics your clients care about. Your blog is not only a writing portfolio, but a way to generate interest in your business.
Kristen Kellogg — Writing Two Articles For A Local Newsletter
I made my first $100 writing two articles for a local newsletter on Nantucket. I’ve come a long way since then. I now have a travel brand and small creative Agency where I travel the world working with various brands and businesses through experiential storytelling.
What advice would you recommend to someone wanting to make money online?
Don’t give up. So many people I see give up because they didn’t realize how hard it would be and all of the ups and downs involved. My tip: those who don’t give up and have vision will make it further than they ever thought possible.
I got a commission from an affiliate. A friend of mine created an online program, I simply took the link, shared it in my social media networks and within 5 minutes someone had purchased this course and voilà!
What advice would you recommend to someone wanting to make money online?
You don’t need to create the product yourself, you can partner with other business, called affiliates, and help them spread their message. Obviously you have to know, like and trust the person or the product you are promoting and you need to make sure it has its quality because at the end of the day it’s still your name and your reputation that’s on the line.
The first time I ever made money solely online was when I published my first book.
What advice would you recommend to someone wanting to make money online?
I would give the following advice to anyone who wants to develop a side hustle, find something you’re good at, then write about it, or see about creating a video series explaining it.
Created one of the first online film festivals where filmmakers competed for cash prizes. We earned money from entry fees, typically $25 per entry.
What advice would you recommend to someone wanting to make money online?
Give customers or clients great value for their money. In our case, customers not only had the chance to win cash, but we made it possible for everyone to exhibit their work online. So even those who didn’t win a prize got exposure.
Dallas McLaughlin — Selling Oddities & Rarities on eBay
The first $100 I made online was on eBay in 2001. My early teen years were spent scavenging garage sales and thrift shops for any oddity or rarity that I could sell through a local bank’s classified ads. The most common scores were trading cards, magazine sets and board games. As a 15 year old I discovered eBay and it was obvious to me the opportunity that existed in this new connected world. Not only were my wins no longer dictated by local interest and availability, but now the time consuming aspect of physically searching for products was replaced with a search bar. This allowed me to focus my time on money making processes such as optimizing the buying, selling and shipping cycle.
What advice would you recommend to someone wanting to make money online?
The advice I would offer is no different from the advice that has been offered for thousands of years. Identify a product that is in demand, find a source of acquiring that product below cost and resell it with a profit margin. This can be done by finding one-to-one sellers or leveraging buying power with wholesalers. All that has changed in the last twenty years is the sales platform, connectivity between buyers and sellers, and the scale in which these types marketplaces can be executed. The simplest way to have success selling online is to understand how to sell offline and replicate that strategy in a digital marketplace.
The first $100 I made online was selling ebooks and online courses through gumroad. It was one of the most rewarding experiences I have had in my life. Making money online is a muscle like anything else. As you learn more ways and practice, the easier it gets. Start today, sell your knowledge and practice.
Daisy Jing — Reviewing Skincare Products on YouTube & Building Influence
ACNE Gave Me My First $100 Online! I had bad acne and tried everything to help clear it up. I tried hundreds of different beauty products, and decided to review beauty products to help others suffering with the same problem. In turn, I developed a following of over 50M views in YouTube and became a trusted source of information in the realm of skin problems. Eventually, I came up with my own skincare line and found my first customers — my followers. Technically, my followers were my first customers who gave me my first $100. Because of their encouragement and support, I launched my natural skin care line focused on combating skin blemishes. Now we are a team of 14+ women, inspiring confidence in others.
What advice would you recommend to someone wanting to make money online?
The best advice I can give others is to be vulnerable and consistent. Because of my vulnerability to share my story, I became a trustworthy source of skin care reviews which eventually made me a trustworthy person to make a skin care line. I also included “consistency” because from Day 1 of uploading my videos to the days I’m inspiring my community and up to this day I’m typing this, I’m still the same honest, reliable, and responsive Daisy that my followers have known since my “breakout” days. Me and my team regularly communicate, post to our social media accounts, and engage to our community. It’s a consistent effort to be connected with the people who trusted me from the start.
I started my first business during grad school. It was an online novelty store (think rubber chickens and fake vomit) based on the magic shop on Main Street in Disneyland. I cleared more than $100 in my first month, mostly from friends and family, but eventually, the real clients started showing up after I started showing up in search engine results.
What advice would you recommend to someone wanting to make money online?
Advertising is your friend, but remember what your ultimate goals are – to sell more stuff. It’s easy to get caught up in all the numbers that are thrown at you by different websites and advertising agencies as a way to show how successful the campaigns are, but they’re really only successful if they help you sell more stuff.
Anna Nicole Roberson — Cruelty-Free Makeup Store on Etsy
I love makeup. So I started a handmade, cruelty-free lipstick company and opened a store on Etsy. I made $200 the first month.
What advice would you recommend to someone wanting to make money online?
My advice to aspiring business owners: First, decide which industry you most enjoy. Then build a social media following around that. The next step is to create a landing page (instead of a whole website) to test your idea and to build a list of potential leads.
My first gig actually came from Reddit! I replied to an ad on http://reddit.com/r/forhire seeking a writer to write career overviews for a career resource website the poster was building. They paid $15 a piece, and I wrote 10 of them my first week, bringing in $150. The job ended up bringing in $150 of work every week for months to come.
What advice would you recommend to someone wanting to make money online?
The best advice I have is to apply for EVERYTHING at first, literally everything you think you could possibly do, and then after you build up some experience, start narrowing yourself into a niche or specialty field based on what you like and what you’re good at (and what pays well!). Also, don’t sell yourself short! Never respond to job postings saying things like I’m new at this or Although I don’t have much experience. Don’t lie either, but if you talk the talk, you’ll walk the walk. There’s a quote that floats around on the internet from some famous entrepreneur saying something along the lines of If someone asks you if you can do something, say yes, and then go find out how to do it. That’s how we all get started from nothing.
Anna Renault — Selling eBook About Personal Cancer Struggle
My first $100 made online was from the sale of several copies of my book,Anna’s Journey: How many lives does one person get? I found a page on Facebook dedicated to people involved with cancer. My book chronicles my journey through eight different bouts of cancer.Needless to say, RIGHT audience for my book produced several sales. I also used the Relay for Life page to post a fundraiser for various teams – donating some profits to the American Cancer Society through those teams…. and thus, sold more books making another hundred or two.
My first 100 dollars, I actually made tutoring a student on skype. I started off by marketing my services on care.com and Craigslist and eventually was approached by a potential client. I had met with the client via skype and I earned my first 100 dollars over a period of 2 hours. That was the impetus that led to me starting my business and it was the first time I made money.
I have passion for writing and consulting/teaching so I looked online for websites that provide clients for my different services. One of my favorites is Upwork (previously called Elance and Odesk). I wrote some articles and got my first $100.
What advice would you recommend to someone wanting to make money online?
My best advice would be that you have to take it serious and grow in by being persistent; learn from every client and be patient in creating your client list. Stay organize and meet deadlines.
I made my first $100 online on several Ebay accounts, on my website and on my Storenvy store.
What advice would you recommend to someone wanting to make money online?
I’m giving you some pieces of advices for people who wants to give a try to e-commerce business:
1 Look for trendy products in your fields. If you are an artist/artist and want to sell online, try to follow the fashion trend and try to give a shot to your own designed items. But when you star a new e-commerce business the best thing is to follow the trends.
2 Check your competitors prices, product descriptions, prices. Understand in creative way how you can differentiate from your competitors. For example you can offer better shipping time, free shipping, same day shipping, fast order processing time, easy return, free exchange. It’s important to write in the product description in how you differentiate from your competitors. When you price your product, check the shipping rates you are going to pay and check also the rates of different kind of shipping, because customers often ask for different shipping methods like priority, next day, 48 hours and so on.
3 Be very responsive to customers emails in terms of time and be nice, helpful to solve potential customers and customers issues.
4 Take beautiful pics of the items you sell. Give life to your products.
5 Don’t you have items to sell? Try to buy on Chinese marketplaces. But be careful, traps are anywhere when you buy from China. From receiving a different item from what you order, receiving smelly items, broken, off size. Spend some time to read different reviews on Google. Don’t trust the review on Chinese websites, most of time those reviews are fake. Instead, Google for (company name + scam or ripoff.) and you’ll have the big pictures of your potential sellers
6 Have a clear FAQ section on your shop/website, where you help shoppers to understand about you and your business. Be relevant with info regarding payments terms, shipping and return.
7 Always offer Paypal as payment option. Shopper love Paypal.
8 Important: If you start a new e-commerce business, don’t’ give up if after 1 week if you don’t get sales. Often sales happen also after 3 weeks or 1 month.
9 If you are an artist, designer, small brand you can give a shot to Storenvy.com . They don’t have set up fees and listing fees. You just pay a small percentage if you sell your items and they are very supportive with their sellers.
10 If you want to try to open your store, give a try to Shopify. It’s very easy to use and full of useful apps that let you scale your business as you grow. Their customer service is very supportive an they have 24 hours online chat service. If you are based in USA, you can also open a free Buyable pin stores and get lot of free traffic to your store and also nice sales. If you are in fashion business, give a try also to Instagram.
I made my first $100 on Elance (now Upwork), writing blog posts for a recruiter.
What advice would you recommend to someone wanting to make money online?
For those looking to get started working online, there’s a few things you’ll need to do. Ensure your profile is fully updated, put together a couple of examples of the work a client can expect, and be willing to work for a lower rate in your first couple of gigs to build up some reviews and feedback on your profile. It’s a little more competitive today than it was five years ago when I started, but there will always be clients looking for quality work.
Patryk Klesta — Re-selling Chinese Products in Europe
Since the focus of my website is on travel guides for independent travelers, I started to include affiliate links for hotels that I personally stayed at and that I recommend in the travel guide. A few days later, the first bookings came in and voila!*
What advice would you recommend to someone wanting to make money online?
People don’t like being sold to. Recommend products and services that complement your original content and only sell products which you have personally tried and tested.
I run a photography training center and knew I had to start offering classes online in order to expand. The first class went live in late November. I signed up 13 students at the discounted rate of $297 for a total of $3861. I was very excited! Since it’s live, it’s a tremendous amount of work to check homework and support the students. What I found is that putting together a fabulous class, although very time consuming, is not the hard part (read my reviews – people LOVE my class). The hard part is selling it. Marketing techniques that worked just a couple years ago are not working as well now.
So I’ve been steadily growing my fan base with Facebook and Google ads, public speaking and now am starting a Facebook Live show, which will be repurposed into a podcast. -*Avant-Garde Images, Inc.www.naplesportraits.com
Polar Ambassadors made its first $100 online in record time once we launched, but we did our due diligence prior to launching. Our company offers products that are targeted to teen and college-age kids, and we did our research prior to launching, heavily relying on the opinions of a core group of teens/tweens. We sought info on the design, products, colors and price.
What advice would you recommend to someone wanting to make money online?
Advice from Polar Ambassadors regarding how to make money in the same way is this: only sell what you believe in! Our company’s mission is to assist in the effort to save the polar bears, a cause we truly believe to be important. We could not be as focused on our core mission if we did not believe in it so wholeheartedly.
I made my first $100 online in 2011 by creating handmade birthday party invitation cards and paper decorations for 1yrs old birthday party. This order came through my hobby craft blog which was less than a year old and I did not even have a paypal account then! ( go figure!) So when the inquiry came I figured out all the payment and shipping process, as I was living in Australia then and order was from Michigan USA!
I made my first $100 online selling our handmade outdoor accessories on my website. I believe the first few products sold were the tie-dyed beanies (Feb 2016). We make them in California and are now selling in 20 stores nationwide as well as on our website still.
What advice would you recommend to someone wanting to make money online?
The best advice I would give someone else interested in making money the same way is: Get started NOW! It takes longer to get you ecommerce shop all set-up and operating than you think – and details are important. Start ASAP and start working out the bugs now.
I released an EP in 2010 and loved the experience of recording songs. I was looking for ways to make money from home because I had two young children, so I added a “hire me” page on my website for demo singing services. I received referrals from a songwriting forum and charged $150 or more per song.
What advice would you recommend to someone wanting to make money online?
Do not overthink it. There are a million and one ways to do something someone else believes is impossible. If I had read about how hard it was to make money online as a demo singer first, I may not have tried it. There are free online applications to make every aspect of running your business seamless, whether you are creating a website, e-signing contracts, sharing music files, recording vocals, or accepting payment. What will help you excel is professionalism, talent and integrity.
Nikki Robinson — Taking Surveys / Joining Online Focus Groups
Back in middle school, I became interested in making money from my time spent on the Internet. The first $100 – earned in 6th grade – came through online research surveys and online focus groups. The invitations to participate were sent via email. I spent a lot of Time searching the key phrase get paid to take surveys to find legitimate, paying companies that would pay $5 or more for participation.
Tony Griego — Creating MySpace Support Sites & Google Adsense
I made my first $100 online in the summer of 2005. A college friend and I were creating a MySpace (this is around the time Google bought YouTube and Facebook was not all that well known) support sites (skins, icons, etc.) and giving them away on our site for free. We also had ad spaces up for Google AdSense. Our first $100 was definitely the hardest. By the end of that fall, we were clearing $2,000 a month and even (temporarily) crippled a small, cheap hosting company for our site www.moremyspacejunk.com. We ran into some TOS issues with Google and eventually got our account banned. Now a days, I get most of my best online money from consulting projects (SEO & SEM) via referrals from my professional network. I also am a user tester at UserTesting.com and would definitely recommend that as a good (and reliable) way to make money online if you have little to no experience.
I’ve been blogging about reward credit cards and travel hacking for about four years now. I made my first $100 online through credit card affiliate links. At the time, it was very easy to join bank affiliate programs, which paid very well. I earned *$500 *when a reader used my affiliate link to sign up for a Chase Ink Plus card. Credit card companies eventually became stricter about who they gave affiliate links to, so I began earning money via adsense and freelance writing.
What advice would you recommend to someone wanting to make money online?
I would advise anyone interested in making money through affiliate relationships to make sure their site is well optimized for whatever product they are trying to sell.
I made my first $100 online in 1999, when I was hired as a freelance web designer after pitching a small, rural real estate agency on having a website designed.
What advice would you recommend to someone wanting to make money online?
Reach out and connect with businesses that could use your services and educate them on why it can help them. I had no relationship with this real estate agency prior to pitching them in a cold email and talking about the benefits of setting up a web site to help them market their property listings.
I made my first $100 online in 2014 using Adsense. I create online how-to tutorials on using Excel Spreadsheets. It took me a while to get my adsense account approved (got rejected thrice), but when I finally managed to get it, it was all about getting traffic. I generated a lot of good quality tutorials which were soon ranking on the first page in Google. This spike in traffic helped my adsense earnings. It took me 3 months to get my first $100, and it has been growing ever since. Now I get 200,000 page views every month that results in good adsense revenue.
What will your story be?
Now that you’ve read the success stories of 65 online entrepreneurs, what will your story look like? How will you make your first $100 online? Meanwhile, if you’ve already made $100 online, share your experience in the comments below — we’d love to hear your story.
Post originally shared on SafalNiveshak.com and shared courtesy of the Uncopyrighted Project.
Whenever I feel uninspired, I look to a collection of my favorite quotes and passages I keep in a document on my computer or marked in my books (my idea bank). Today was one of those days.
As I was re-reading some of these and remembering why I love writing, reading, and the power of words, I thought perhaps someone somewhere out there might be feeling the same as me before I started writing this post.
So, here are 20 of the most beautiful passages (in no particular order) I have ever read on life and related subjects, and which have helped me become a better version of myself over the years. These exclude everything I have learned from Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger (there’s anyways an overdose of these two wise men on this blog).
Hope you find these passages of some help, and worth your time. Ready? Let’s go.
1. Steve Jobs on Having Courage to Follow Your Heart and Intuition
Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. (Source)
2. Naval Ravikant on Life Being a Single Player Game
Socially, we’re told, “Go work out. Go look good.” That’s a multi-player competitive game. Other people can see if I’m doing a good job or not. We’re told, “Go make money. Go buy a big house.” Again, external monkey-player competitive game. When it comes to learn to be happy, train yourself to be happy, completely internal, no external progress, no external validation, 100% you’re competing against yourself, single-player game.
We are such social creatures, we’re more like bees or ants, that we’re externally programmed and driven, that we just don’t know how to play and win at these single-player games anymore. We compete purely on multi-player games.
The reality is life is a single-player game. You’re born alone. You’re going to die alone. All of your interpretations are alone. All your memories are alone. You’re gone in three generations and nobody cares. Before you showed up, nobody cared. It’s all single-player. (Source)
3. Eknath Easwaran on Fighting the War Within
The battlefield is a perfect backdrop, but the Gita’s subject is the war within, the struggle for self-mastery that every human being must wage if he or she is to emerge from life victorious.
Scholars can debate the point forever, but when the Gita is practiced, I think, it becomes clear that the struggle the Gita is concerned with is the struggle for self-mastery. It was Vyasa’s genius to take the whole great Mahabharata epic and see it as metaphor for the perennial war between the forces of light and the forces of darkness in every human heart. Arjuna and Krishna are then no longer merely characters in a literary masterpiece. Arjuna becomes Everyman, asking the Lord himself, Sri Krishna, the perennial questions about life and death – not as a philosopher, but as the quintessential man of action. Thus read, the Gita is not an external dialogue but an internal one: between the ordinary human personality, full of questions about the meaning of life, and our deepest Self, which is divine.
There is, in fact, no other way to read the Gita and grasp it as spiritual instruction. If I could offer only one key to understanding this divine dialogue, it would be to remember that it takes place in the depths of consciousness and that Krishna is not some external being, human or superhuman, but the spark of divinity that lies at the core of the human personality. (Source)
4. Carl Sagan on Being Kind and Compassionate
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity – in all this vastness – there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
It is up to us. It’s been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known. (Source)
5. Seneca on the Shortness of Life
It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it… Life is long if you know how to use it. (Source)
6. Marcus Aurelius on the Unnaturalness of Anger
When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: the people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own – not of the same blood and birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him. We were born to work together like feet, hands and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him: these are unnatural. (Source)
7. Haruki Murakami on Weathering Life’s Storms
Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn’t something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn’t get in, and walk through it, step by step. There’s no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones. That’s the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine.
And you really will have to make it through that violent, metaphysical, symbolic storm. No matter how metaphysical or symbolic it might be, make no mistake about it: it will cut through flesh like a thousand razor blades. People will bleed there, and you will bleed too. Hot, red blood. You’ll catch that blood in your hands, your own blood and the blood of others.
And once the storm is over you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about. (Source)
8. Dale Carnegie on Living One Day at a Time
You and I are standing this very second at the meeting place of two eternities: the vast past that has endured forever, and the future that is plunging on to the last syllable of recorded time. We can’t possibly live on either of those eternities – no, not even for one split second. But, by trying to do so, we can wreck both our bodies and our minds. So let’s be content to live the only time we can possibly live: from now until bedtime.
“Anyone can carry his burden, however hard, until nightfall,” wrote Robert Louis Stevenson. “Anyone can do his work, however hard, for one day. Anyone can live sweetly, patiently, lovingly, purely, till the sun goes down. And this is all that life really means.” (Source)
9. Kahlil Gibran on Children
Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you yet they belong not to you
You may give them your love but not your thoughts, For they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far. Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness; For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable. (Source)
10. Viktor Frankl on Dealing with Success
Don’t aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long-run—in the long-run, I say! — success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think about it. (Source)
11. Dostoevsky on Not Lying to Ourselves
Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love. (Source)
12. Anne Frank on Seeking Solace in Nature
The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quite alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature. As longs as this exists, and it certainly always will, I know that then there will always be comfort for every sorrow, whatever the circumstances may be. And I firmly believe that nature brings solace in all troubles. (Source)
13. Nassim Taleb on Us Being Black Swans
I am sometimes taken aback by how people can have a miserable day or get angry because they feel cheated by a bad meal, cold coffee, a social rebuff or a rude reception…We are quick to forget that just being alive is an extraordinary piece of good luck, a remote event, a chance occurrence of monstrous proportions.
Imagine a speck of dust next to a planet a billion times the size of the earth. The speck of dust represents the odds in favour of your being born; the huge planet would be the odds against it. So stop sweating the small stuff. Don’t be like the ingrate who got a castle as a present and worried about the mildew in the bathroom. Stop looking the gift horse in the mouth – remember that you are a Black Swan. (Source)
14. Yuval Noah Harari on the Power of Meditation
According to Buddhism, the root of suffering is neither the feeling of pain nor of sadness nor even of meaninglessness. Rather, the real root of suffering is this never-ending and pointless pursuit of ephemeral feelings, which causes us to be in a constant state of tension, restlessness and dissatisfaction. Due to this pursuit, the mind is never satisfied. Even when experiencing pleasure, it is not content, because it fears this feeling might soon disappear, and craves that this feeling should stay and intensify.
People are liberated from suffering not when they experience this or that fleeting pleasure, but rather when they understand the impermanent nature of all their feelings, and stop craving them. This is the aim of Buddhist meditation practices. In meditation, you are supposed to closely observe your mind and body, witness the ceaseless arising and passing of all your feelings, and realise how pointless it is to pursue them. When the pursuit stops, the mind becomes very relaxed, clear and satisfied. All kinds of feelings go on arising and passing – joy, anger, boredom, lust – but once you stop craving particular feelings, you can just accept them for what they are. You live in the present moment instead of fantasising about what might have been. The resulting serenity is so profound that those who spend their lives in the frenzied pursuit of pleasant feelings can hardly imagine it. It is like a man standing for decades on the seashore, embracing certain ‘good’ waves and trying to prevent them from disintegrating, while simultaneously pushing back ‘bad’ waves to prevent them from getting near him. Day in, day out, the man stands on the beach, driving himself crazy with this fruitless exercise. Eventually, he sits down on the sand and just allows the waves to come and go as they please. How peaceful! (Source)
15. Ed Viesturs on Karma
Although I remain uncertain about God or any particular religion, I believe in karma. What goes around, comes around. How you live your life, the respect that you give others and the mountain, and how you treat people in general will come back to you in kindred fashion. I like to talk about what I call the Karma National Bank. If you give up the summit to help rescue someone who’s in trouble, you’ve put a deposit in that bank. And sometime down the road, you may need to make a big withdrawal. (Source)
16. Albert Einstein on Widening Our Circles of Compassion
A human being is part of a whole, called by us the “Universe,” a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. (Source)
17. Daily Stoic on Dealing with the Scary World
In Aaron Thier’s wonderful new novel, The World Is A Narrow Bridge, there is a scene where Eva and Murphy, the two young prophets of the god Yahweh, are sent on a mission that terrifies them. As they begin the mission, Eva and Murphy are approached by Satan, who has been sent by Yahweh, to give them their final instructions. After Satan gives the instructions, he begins to leave for his next mission:
“You have to go so soon?” says Eva. “Right away?”
She looks devastated. Murphy, too, is unhappy. Satan frowns and chews on his lip. He doesn’t like to leave them like this.
“I’ll teach you a trick,” he says. “I’ll teach you an incantation that will protect against despair. If things are dark, and I’m not around to help, you can repeat it a few times and it’ll help.
It would go something like this: ‘The world is a narrow bridge, and the most important thing is not to be afraid.’”
Murphy and Eva both repeat this very slowly. Eva says, “That’s lovely.”
Satan nods. “Just repeat it to yourself when things are bad. You could try different translations too. ‘Do not make yourself afraid, the whole world is a narrow bridge.’
The point is this life we’re living—this world we inhabit—is a scary place. If you peer over the side of a narrow bridge, you can lose your heart to continue. You freeze up. You sit down. So too with life. If we think too much about the journey we have to make, the one that begins with the trauma of birth and ends with the tragedy of death, the one that is so perilous and unpredictable, we’ll never make it.
The important thing is that we are not afraid. That we don’t overthink things. That we don’t give way to fear, as the Stoics tell us over and over again. Just repeat it to yourself—The world is a narrow bridge and I will not be afraid—and keep going. Like the thousands of generations who have come before you. (Source)
18. Morrie Schwartz on Life’s Purpose and Meaning
So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they’re busy doing things they think are important. This is because they’re chasing the wrong things. The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning. (Source)
19. Seneca on Hope and Fear
Limiting one’s desires actually helps to cure one of fear. ‘Cease to hope … and you will cease to fear.’ … Widely different [as fear and hope] are, the two of them march in unison like a prisoner and the escort he is handcuffed to. Fear keeps pace with hope … both belong to a mind in suspense, to a mind in a state of anxiety through looking into the future. Both are mainly due to projecting our thoughts far ahead of us instead of adapting ourselves to the present. (Source)
20. Courtney Peppernell on Living Our Stories Well
You can’t skip chapters, that’s not how life works. You have to read every line, meet every character. You won’t enjoy all of it. Hell, some chapters will make you cry for weeks. You will read things you don’t want to read, you will have moments when you don’t want the pages to end. But you have to keep going. Stories keep the world evolving. Live yours, don’t miss out. (Source)
What Inspires You in Life? Please share in the comments section of this post.
Adapted from a Safal Niveshak original in 2020, courtesy of the Uncopyrighted Project.
I wish you a very happy, healthy, and fulfilling 2021.
Life’s moving really fast and continuing to create new challenges and opportunities as many of us reach a full year of quarantining and working from home.
As we begin 2021, here are a few things to aspire to each day.
1. Each day, do something foolish, something creative, and something generous.
This is not a big long term goal that should worry you just by the magnitude of it. It’s a daily task, which is much easier to accomplish.
In another year of indoor-living and potentially more family time than ever before, find a small piece of fun in each day.
Be silly. Don't act your age. Write. Draw. Learn a song on a musical instrument.
And when you're done, find a way to pass on a generous act of kindness to somebody you speak to today.
2. Don’t worry too much about making money.
It won’t change the way you live. Time spent earning enough money is time reasonably well spent. Time earning an excess of money far beyond that required to meet one’s needs, however, is time wasted. So, know how much is enough.
As far as saving money is concerned, take it seriously but not too much that you compromise your and your family’s present. Especially when you are making a reasonable income and are already saving enough, remember what Warren Buffett says –
…who is to say whether it is better to defer a dollar of expenditure on your family – on a trip to Disneyland or something that they’ll get enormous enjoyment out of – so that when you are 75, you can have a 30-feet boat instead of a 20-feet boat. There are advantages to spending money on your family when it is young – giving them various forms of enjoyment, education, or whatever it may be. But it’s crazy to be spending 105% of your income.
3. Do your work, your best work, the work that matters to you.
Find work you love. Work ought to be chosen for its intrinsic value, and for its sense of enjoyment, sense of purpose. Life is much too short to spend doing something you don’t like, even for a few years.
4. Choose well.
The most important choices you’ll ever make in life will be with respect to your spouse and your friends. If you choose right, then later choices become simple. The less effort you have to give something, the more powerful you become.
5. “What if I fail?” is not the question.
You will fail. So the better question might be, “After I fail, what then?” If you’ve chosen well, after you fail you will be one step closer to succeeding, you will be wiser and stronger and you almost certainly will be more respected by all of those that are afraid to try.
6. Don’t put off “living happily ever after” for another year.
Don’t assume you’ll have another year. You won’t get this life again. No one will bring back the years; no one will restore you to yourself. Life will follow the path it began to take, and will neither reverse nor check its course. Life will not lengthen at your command. As it started out on its first day, so it will run on, nowhere pausing or turning aside. Stop being busy. Tell the ones you love how much you love them often enough. You could be very happy with almost nothing if you had a loving family, and you weren’t competing with a lot of other people who had more than you did.
7. Become wiser.
Becoming wise is a slow game, but wisdom builds up, like compound interest. You have to work at it for a long, long time. But the earlier you start, the more territory you can cover. And the more big, important ideas you can assimilate, the easier the learning process is. Have a temperament to grab ideas and do sensible things. Start this process in 2020 if you haven’t already.
8. Let go of your need to control.
Control makes us feel secure. But this security is dependent entirely on our feeling of keeping such control. And when things don’t go as planned, which is often the case, such a need to keep control may drive us crazy, and lead us to wrong, irreversible decisions.
Consider investing. You will work tremendously hard to earn great returns from the stock market only to sometimes see them disappear into thin air. And that’s okay. As an investor, you should learn to relax. Because making and losing money is just the nature of investing, and often outside your control. So just do your work well, and then let it go.
9. Get rich quick
by doing these five simple things –
Create value for others;
Contribute to someone, without keeping score;
Say what needs to be said;
Learn something new, something scary; and
Reject false shortcuts.
10. Deal well with your fears.
We’re all fearful…of some things…and many things. I’ve never seen any person who has no fear. However, in dealing with fear several times over the past few years, I have realized one very important thing.
It is that, in our life, the issue is not really ‘fear’ but rather, what we do despite it. We can either get managed by fear, or manage it. We can either acknowledge fear or fall into an emotional whirlpool. We can either accept fear or pretend that it doesn’t exist at all. We can either give up or get up in the face of fear.
In fact, fear is what keeps us safe at most times in our lives. Fear keeps us out of harm’s way. All we need to have is the courage to manage it. Now, nobody can give us the courage. Even if Buddha were sitting right here next to you, he couldn’t give it to you. You have to practice it and realize it yourself. You have to make a habit of mindfulness practice to get over your fears. Then, when fear strikes you, you will already know what to do.
Anyways, before I close, here is a beautiful poem from Khalil Gibran, the Lebanese poet well known for his book, The Prophet, that strikes a chord deep within.
FEAR (Khalil Gibran)
It is said that before entering the sea a river trembles with fear.
She looks back at the path she has traveled, from the peaks of the mountains, the long winding road crossing forests and villages.
And in front of her, she sees an ocean so vast, that to enter there seems nothing more than to disappear forever.
But there is no other way. The river can not go back.
Nobody can go back. To go back is impossible in existence.
The river needs to take the risk of entering the ocean because only then will fear disappear, because that’s where the river will know it’s not about disappearing into the ocean, but of becoming the ocean.
Benjamin Franklin said, “Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man.
I’m so grateful to have you shared this journey with me, and I look forward to continuing our connection in 2021, whatever it may bring.
This post was written by Leo Babauta and generously shared from Zen Habits via the Uncopywright Project.
‘You will never change your life until you change something you do daily.’ ~Mike Murdock
Start with a simple statement: what do you want to be?
Are you hoping to someday be a writer, a musician, a designer, a programmer, a polyglot, a carpenter, a manga artist, an entrepreneur, an expert at something?
How do you get there? Do you write your intention on a piece of paper, and put it in a bottle and launch it to sea, hoping it will manifest? No. The universe isn’t going to make this happen. You are.
Do you set yourself a big goal to complete by the end of the year, or in three months? Sure, but that doesn’t get the job done. In fact, if you think back on most examples in your life, setting big long-term goals probably doesn’t work very often. How many times has this strategy been successful?
I’m going to lay down the law here, based on many many experiments I’ve done in the last 7 years: nothing will change unless you make a daily change.
I’ve tried weekly action steps, things that I do every other day, big bold monthly goals, lots of other permutations. None of them work except daily changes.
If you’re not willing to make it a daily change, you don’t really want to change your life in this way. You only like the idea of learning to draw/speak Japanese/play guitar/program in php/etc. You don’t really want to do it.
So make a daily change. Let’s dig into how it’s done!
Change Your Life by Turning an Aspiration Into a Daily Habit
Let’s name a few aspirations:
lose weight
write a book
stop procrastinating
fall in love
be happy
travel the world
drink more water
learn Spanish
save money
take more pictures
read more books
How do you turn those lofty ideas into daily changes? Think about what you could do every day that would make the change happen, or at least get you closer to the goal. Sometimes that’s not always easy, but let’s look at some ideas:
lose weight – start walking every day, for 10 minutes at first, then 15 after a week, then 20 … once you are walking for 30-40 minutes a day, make another change — drink water instead of soda.
write a book – write for 10 minutes a day.
stop procrastinating – I can already hear the ironic (and original!) jokes about how people will deal with procrastination later (har!). Anyway, a daily action: set a Most Important Task each morning, then work on it for 10 minutes before opening your browser/mobile device.
fall in love – go somewhere each day and meet/social with new people. Or do daily things that make you a fascinating person.
be happy – do something each day to make the world better, to help people.
travel the world – save money (see next item). Or start selling your stuff, so you can carry your belongings on a backpack and start hitchhiking.
save money – start cutting out smaller expenses. Start cooking and eating at home. Sell your car and bike/walk/take the train. Start looking for a smaller home. Do free stuff instead of buying things.
drink more water – drink water when you wake up, then every time you take a break (once an hour).
learn Spanish – study Spanish sentences in Anki and listen to Pimsleur tapes 10 minutes a day.
take more pictures – take pictures at lunch (but dear jeebus, not of your lunch) and post them to your blog.
read more books – read every morning and before you go to bed.
You get the idea. Not all of these are perfect ideas, but you could come up with something that works better for you. Point is, do it daily.
How to Implement Daily Change in Your Life
This method is fairly simple, and if you really implement it, nearly foolproof:
One Change at a Time. You can break this rule, but don’t be surprised if you fail. Do one change for a month before considering a second. Only add another change if you were successful at the first.
Start Small. OK, I’ve said this two bajillion times. No one ever does it, though. Start with 10 minutes or less. Five minutes is better if it’s a hard change. If you fail at that, drop it to 2 minutes.
Do it at the same time each day. OK, not literally at the same minute, like at 6:00 a.m., but after the same trigger in your daily routine — after you drink your first cup of coffee in the morning, after you arrive at work, after you get home, after you brush your teeth, shower, eat breakfast, wake up, eat lunch, turn on your computer, first see your wife each day.
Make a huge commitment to someone. Or multiple people. Make sure it’s someone whose opinion you respect. For example, I made a commitment to studying/coding PHP at least 10 minutes each day to my friend Tynan. I’ve made commitments to my wife, to other friends, to readers of this blog, to readers of a newspaper on Guam, to my kids, and more.
Be accountable. Taking my programming example with Tynan … each day I have to update a Google spreadsheet each day showing how many minutes I programmed/studied each day, and he can (and does) check that shared spreadsheet. The tool you use doesn’t matter — you can post to Facebook or Twitter, email someone, mark it on a calendar, report in person. Just make sure you’re accountable each day, not each month. And make sure the person is checking. If they don’t check on you, you need to find a new accountability partner or group.
Have consequences. The most important consequence for doing or not doing the daily habit is that if you don’t, the people will respect you less, and if you do, they’ll respect you more. If your accountability system isn’t set up this way, find another way to do it. You might need to change who you’re accountable to. But you can add other fun consequences: one friend made a promise to Facebook friends that he’d donate $50 to Mitt Romney’s campaign (this was last year) each time he didn’t follow through on a commitment. I’ve made a promise to eat whale sushi (I won’t fail, because eating a whale is repugnant to me, like eating a cow or a child). I’ve promised to sing a Japanese song in front of strangers if I failed. The consequences can also be positive — a big reward each week if you don’t miss a day, for example. Make the consequences bigger if you miss two straight days, and huge if you miss three.
Enjoy the change. If you don’t do this, you might as well find another change to make. If the daily action feels tedious and chore-like, then you are doing it wrong. Find a way to enjoy it, or you won’t stick to it long. Or find some other change you enjoy more.
That’s it. Seven pretty simple steps, and you’ve got a changed life. None of these steps is impossible — in fact, you can put them into action today.
What daily change will you make today?
‘A year from now you will wish you had started today.’ ~Karen Lamb
Entrepreneurship is messy. There is no clear roadmap and no set 9-5 time clock. When life is already hectic enough, adding a side-hustle or new small business into your plans can be overwhelming.
Not everyone can make drastic steps toward simplicity, but if you have some control over at least your workday, you can do a few small things that will simplify things greatly.
Start by eliminating most of the routine, boring, administrative tasks with a few simple principles. That way, you can focus on the tasks you enjoy in your business, like creating your products and building relationships with customers.
One of the best moments in life is when you allow yourself to simplify. Declutter mentally, physically and emotionally.
If you don’t have control, or if you find yourself thinking, “I can’t do these things”, I’d start to ask why not?
Is it possible to change things, if not today then over the long term? Often we believe something isn't possible (working from home, for example), but in the long run, could be.
You don’t need to do all of these things — pick just one, and try it. Then try another and see if it works. Experiment to find what works for you.
1. Start early
Start your day before the phone starts ringing and the emails start flooding your inbox. By getting to the office (even your home office) before “standard” work hours, you block of peaceful time to prepare and focus for the day ahead.
It's kind of like working out in the morning. It can be difficult for night owls like myself to adjust, but it feels so fulfilling when you have two or three big tasks checked off your list before most people start their day.
2. Limit your hours.
It's an impulse to believe that working longer hours equates to higher productivity. But studies have shown that on time on the clock does not create higher value for your company.
By cutting back and limiting yourself to 6-8 hour days maximum, you will naturally become better at prioritizing what matters. The essential projects will move to the top of your list as you force yourself to be more efficient with your time.
3. Make a short list.
Are you a list-builder? I love making lists and feeling that thrill and accomplishment of crossing something off.
Challenge yourself to take your normal list and cut it to no more than THREE items that absolutely have to get done that day.
I call these your “Most Important Tasks” or M.I.T.s.
Choose the projects or tasks that if nothing else were completed that day, you'd still be proud and feel success from your day.
Prioritize these MITs so highly that you finish them before any other tasks, including drowning in your email inbox.
4. Batch distractions.
As an entrepreneur in a tech-forward world, it feels essential to be highly active on every social media site in order to be responsive to your audience.
However, in the same way surfing the web and watching tv can be distractions, process that FEEL productive can equally become distractions.
Things like email, reading blogs, and responding to all your DMs quickly eat up more time than we realize.
Schedule a time to knock out these process all at once – preferably later in the day: say, from 3-4 p.m.
By grouping them all into one time period, you can stay focused on your MITs in the morning, but still set structured time for your “distraction tasks.”
Another approach is to block off only 10 minutes at the end of each hour for distraction tasks, but it can be harder to stay diligent and not let that time stretch.
5. Write shorter emails.
It may sound crazy, but have you ever noticed how long it takes to send a simple email?
Rather than over analyze your words and rewrite to perfection, aim to cut your emails down to 3-4 sentences per email.
First, it will drastically shorten the time it takes to write or respond to emails.
Second, (and admittedly my favorite aspect) is that it will shorten responses to your emails, which means you’ll spend less time reading email.
6. Limit meetings.
Meetings are a staple of the corporate world. They are a necessity for teams and communication as well. But that does not mean they have to be the standard 30 – 60 minutes we have become accustomed to, and we certainly do not need several a day.
Some top Google executives hold only 5-minute meetings. Gary Vaynerchuk is a huge proponent of this concept as well.
Anyone who attends these meetings better be prepared and concise.
If you can skip out of meetings and collect note or communicate a different way, it could save you hours per week.
7. Automate.
The fewer repetitive and routine tasks you have to accomplish, the more time you’ll free up for creating and developing your valuable projects and services.
As a solopreneur, the earlier you can automate the better. Automate wherever possible:
have customers fill out forms or make orders electronically, screen prospects through a web form prior to scheduling calls, use a service that automatically processes payments or ships your product, and so on.
8. Eliminate paperwork.
In the corporate world, there is not a lot you can do about the amount of paperwork that constantly has to be processed. As an entrepreneur, one benefit is that YOU create the standards of procedure (“SOPs”).
Paperwork may be a necessary evil in some industries, but when it's not absolutely required, eliminate it. We are blessed with so much technology today that most processes should be able to be handled electronically.
9. Clear your desk.
Take a few brief minutes to clear absolutely everything off the top of your desk. Put back nothing else but a few most essential items.
Everything else should be filed, given to the appropriate person, given a permanent spot in a drawer, or trashed/recycled. Make quick decisions and then get back to work.
10. Get away.
Get out of your normal office and find a go-to getaway work spot. Create a peaceful escape where you can focus on high-priority work without distraction.
When traveling what a more frequent occasion, I loved working on an airplane as my getaway focus. It's quiet and relaxed, with no internet service for distractions. Then, I'd be able to save and send once we touched back down on the tarmac.
11. Take breathing breaks.
Every 15-20 minutes, get up from your desk, and take a brief break.
You could turn the “breathe” app on your smartwatch, or simply take a brief walk around your office (or home office!) Even better, get outside for some fresh air.
Walk around, get your blood circulating, and stretch your joints.
When you get back to work, remind yourself what you want to be working on, and clear away all distractions.
12. Practice a focus ritual.
Take a couple minutes every few hours to perform a refocus ritual.
One of my favorites is to fully shut down every application and opened tab in my browser.
It may sound simple and marginally effective, but often my multi-tasking brain goes into overload with too many “open tabs” and the manual processes of shutting them down on a computer truly does help.
Return to your list of Most Important Tasks and figure out what you need to accomplish next before beginning any distraction tasks.
Repeat this refocus ritual throughout the day whenever necessary. It's like meditation for the entrepreneur!
I create resources for female entrepreneurs and career-driven women striving to break out of their comfort zones and through the glass ceiling.
